Oppenheimer Ripping off Advisors?

Oppenheimer Ripping off Advisors

“I worked at Oppenheimer in trading for 8+ years. The firm did not pay us a salary. The way we got paid was to take advantage of our retail salesmen. Oppenheimer did pay salaries for any traders and you encourage to rip off the retail brokers. Basically, we kept 30% of the trading profits and 5% of the sales commission. So it was more beneficial for a trader to keep as much on it trade either a buy or a sell. Even on salesmen selling out a position we hold back a few dollars on each traded. An example would be: if the bid was 98.50 we would give the broker 98.10 on 50m, 75m etc ..and hold back $4.00 per bond. Plus Bud has Bud-Lite running fix income trading who has never sold or traded a bond in his life. So how do you put the Golden Boy in charge of dept? in which he has no clue on how to do it!!! In most large firms the traders are paid a salary by the firm and paid a bonus based on performance. Oppenheimer wanted us to get paid by ripping off retail. If they would have paid our salary we wouldn’t of taking advantage of the retail sales force. This is still going on today. Ask Diane Fox in corporate bonds, she ripping their eyes out every day. Ask any municipal bond trader (Gilberto,Sirianni,Torres etc) they all are ripping retail off!!!”

There’s little doubt as to why officials are calling for such extreme regulatory oversight of the firm. After concerns circulating regarding possible money laundering activity, officials forced their way in at the beginning of the year to gain much-needed control of the situation.

“Former SEC Commissioner Harvey Pitt is now running Oppenheimer quietly behind the scenes. As part of a settlement with the SEC on Jan 27th, 2015, Oppenheimer agreed to retain an independent consultant to review their anti-money laundering procedures and policies as well as review their governance and compliance programs and provide recommendations for changes in or improvements to Oppenheimer’s policies and procedures. This settlement also required Oppenheimer to pay $10MM to SEC and $10MM to the US Dept of Treasury (FinCen) to settle penny stock and money laundering charges. That amounts to $1.45 per share in fines from a company that is estimated to only earn .72 per share this year. Bud Lowenthal, CEO, was given the right to choose his own independent consultant to oversee his firm. He chose former SEC Commissioner Harvey Pitt who founded the consulting firm, Kalorama Partners.”

If half of what is stated above is true, then the firm is in for even more problems and both Bud and Bud Light will need to institute dramatic changes very quickly. We’re waiting for the inevitable fallout of advisors as we’re sure that they won’t want to navigate the increasingly tricky minefield of legal issues just to conduct business. Apparently, whoever was responsible for burying the proverbial bodies didn’t dig deep enough and now they’re waiting to be discovered. Oppenheimer Ripping off Advisors…